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51 thoughts on “Working Wednesday, April 24, 2019”

So far, I have viewed two videos on YouTube on How to Clean an Air Conditioner. Mine needs it, and the weather is warming up. I also bought an LED light fixture (2 feet long) to replace the bare bulb above the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

I’ve been working on getting more exercise, with a very satisfying amount of success. Did 5 decent walks in the last week, which is 5 more than the equivalent week a month ago. Last night I coaxed my partner into going for a walk uphill at 10pm. It was great. We had the park totally to ourselves and lovely views of the city lights. Came back relaxed and tired out and ready for bed.

Plated and Marley Spoon are the only ones working for me right now, but I’m a picky eater, and they’ve both got a solid variety of choices each week, enough that I can do beef/chicken/fish pretty much every week. Left to my own devices, it’d be beef/beef/beef, but this is healthier, plus I get to choose way ahead of time, so I’m not buy food while hungry, which makes for smarter choices. Plus I have developed an irrational distaste for ground meat of any kind, and that cuts back on my choices, too. A lot of the dishes have cilantro, which I cannot abide, but it always comes separate so I just omit that and substitute parsley if it looks like it was important.

Most of the other services had something that annoyed me or didn’t have a big enough selection.

I didn’t like the reliance on finicky sauces that most of the ones I tried had. A very basic bland meal, topped with a sauce. Not my preference. Plus a lot of the meal options had a LOT of carbohydrates, which I’m supposed to limit.

Most of the ones I’ve done aren’t finicky. Braise the protein, take it out of the pan, add butter or olive oil and scrape up the fond, saute optional shallots, splash in some white wine and reduce. If it’s a cream sauce, add cream. If it’s a mustard sauce, add mustard. It it’s a peppercorn sauce, start with peppercorns. Aside from the pasta dishes, I haven’t seen a lot of non-veg carbs. I have, however, seen WAY too much kale and cilantro.

I’m going to try starting with Plated. And I’ll move on to Marley Spoon if that doesn’t work out for me.

I luckily do not have a problem with either kale or cilantro. Although I’m not wild about cilantro, for me it doesn’t have that bad taste that some people have with it. I’ve read some people just have different taste buds for cilantro.

Last week was crazy busy, so I had deliberately NOT started a new quilting project. It would have been too distracting. I had thought maybe to do some crafting Saturday, but plans changed. Friday evening, we had severe weather come through the area. When I walked out onto the back deck to feed the birds Saturday morning, I saw that the neighbor’s 40 ft tall tree had split off a limb, which had fallen in such a way as to block the outside deck access. It missed our house and deck, but had pretty much crushed some cedars between our house and theirs. So, we spent the morning sawing and pruning away the fallen limb – at least the part that was crushing the cedars.

Saturday afternoon and evening was prep for Easter dinner at my MILs. And Sunday, there was dinner with family, and Easter egg hunts for the little ones. Needless to say, it was an exhausting weekend!

But there was a bit of makery this week that I have to share. The neighbor on the other side of the house is a teacher, and her two kids were having a stay-at-home spring break. They did things like make home-made pop tarts. The youngest found some four-leaf clovers, and created book marks with them. He wrote a lovely note and put them in our mailbox Saturday morning. It was a wonderful gift.

I forget if you tried Blue Apron? I enjoyed that one for awhile. Good quality, relatively easy recipes, but still a chance to try new things. It was great for awhile, but then got a bit repetitive in the choices and then I had my babies and felt overwhelmed by a box of stuff showing up that I had to deal with when I was also dealing with two under two…so I cancelled the service. But I keep thinking as they’re getting older I might start up again.

I tried it once, but the choices were limited and I was already getting Plated and Marley Spoon and one of those is going to have to go, so I stopped after one week.

The experiment is a success, though, in that I’m cooking every day and eating balanced meals–never had so much spinach in my life–and making sure I have seafood once a week, which I never did before. I think you’re supposed to have fish twice, but there’s a limit to how much I can face.

I think Plated just fits my tastes and pickiness. Plus it reacquainted me with pan sauce, always a good thing.

I bought a two pairs of mitten clips for a love seat single backrest cushion. Attached them together with ribbon and dangling small stuffed fabric hearts to keep the cushion from always falling forward. In theory it should work but if the fabric rips I’m doomed. Or better yet buy a new love seat.

In an effort to learns more about the business side of writing, I’ve been listening to the SPA girls podcasts–four lovely lady writers from New Zealand talking indie publishing. Loving it and learning a lot. They cover interesting topics, have a good spectrum of guests, and ask smart questions. Plus, they’re fun, which is always a good thing:)

A dear friend got a breast cancer diagnosis on Monday, so a lot of what I’m doing is research. Beyond that, I’ve been in my studio alternately clearing space for bigger making and making tiny collage boxes. My partner says they look like illustrations for children’s books, and also that they “effuse story” which is remarkably poetic for them.

I recommend going straight to Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, current edition (I think this one is it). I had a slight touch of breast cancer about twelve years ago and found the book invaluable. Of course, two years ago a Canadian friend was diagnosed with it and I dispatched a copy of the book forthwith. She said it calmed her worries very quickly, but treatment had advanced to the point that instead of the surgery / radiation therapy / chemotherapy routine, they just gave her a pill to swallow! Don’t know whether that reflected the type she had and whether it was different from mine, or just advances in treatment. However, here’s the link:

Having finished my stalled cross-stitch, I have resumed the crochet basket. Fortunately, I found had finsished about two-thirds, instead of only half of it, before that stalled. I should be able to complete it in another week. And then, I’ll have to see what other unstarted projects I have around.

Another meeting tonight and I will be done with my outside commitments for this week. Can’t wait.

I’m happy to have survived Holy Week and Easter. I do handbells for my church and we logged about 12-14 hrs. from Wednesday night to Sunday morning.

I might bake tonight. My DD wants to make Rosanna Pansino book smores for her bday treat to take to school. And then make Rosanna Pansino’s castle cake for her bday party, which means making marshmallow fondant from scratch. Yes, I’m scared.

I hear you! I play handbells too, but we didn’t include them in Holy Week services thank goodness. But with the vocal choir, we had our special music presentation Friday night (which encompassed a dress rehearsal the previous Saturday and another rehearsal Tuesday evening. We also had to sing at least 2 services on Sunday.

Still flat out on the day job and being to hand for the garden boundary work. Tried to dig out the roots of two Virginia creepers, a Clematis montana and a large conifer stump, and found it’s not possible. The climbers were planted in small holes in paving, and the conifer’s roots go under paving and walls. So am researching second-best options.

I’m also nursing lots of seedlings, which I’ve had to move into the house now the weather’s turned cool again. But the heatwave was wonderful while it lasted.

My pay-the-bills job is TV Production Manager. This weekend we will be recording 15 half-hour episodes of a children’s trivia program (think Jeopardy for seventh graders), and while the lead up has been going on for months the week before is always CRAZY!! But this is something I am very proud of – we are in our 16th season and as far as I know are the only television station (of any market-size) in Canada to be doing something like it. You can check out last season’s programs here if you are at all interested. https://ckpgtoday.ca/quizme

Sounds fab. Reminds me of the “Reach for the Top” TV show we had with high school teams competing for school standing. This was in Montreal years ago and no idea what happened to it, but think it aired on CBC. Remember it as quite popular:)

Believe it or not, one of the first Executive Producers on the show (which is a fancy title for the “guy that gets things done”) actually was a contestant on Reach for the Top in one of it’s last years. I remember watching the program on CBC when I was a kid, too!

Wow. A small world kind of thing. If I recall, the show had one of those “groovy” game show music openers as well. Not as groovy as the old Definition game show (where I believe you could be lucky enough to win a Parker pen set), though;)

I’ve been writing. And writing. And writing.
If this goes on, the manuscript will be done before we leave for our vacation in May. I think I haven’t had such a prolific episode since I finished my first book within six weeks. We’ll see how it goes.

Last week I went to get a test which will help predict which antidepressants are more likely to work for me. Since I have a long history of bad side effects, I don’t want to risk that for a treatment that is unlikely to help. I thought it was a blood test, so I made an appointment to go over the results with my internist yesterday. Since the test is genetic, I won’t get the results until next week, but the Doc and I made plans for what questions we want to ask about treatment options once the hospital gets back to us.

And today I went to my friend Norman’s funeral. He was 93 and had congestive heart failure so this was not exactly a surprise, but it is hard to say goodbye to a friend of almost 27 years. The neat part of the day was meeting several people I hadn’t seen in years or had never met. If Norman liked you, he would tell everyone he knew about you in great detail, so I really felt like I knew some of these people. And meeting them in person was a big treat. The little boy who Norman and his wife, Nourene, used to babysit when his family lived down the hall is now in 5th grade and looked very grown up in his suit and dress shoes. I was also amazed to see how much his son looked like Norman. I didn’t really notice in the pictures I had seen, but it was quite striking in person.

I did some baking for the first time in months and found that I was out of practice. I didn’t whip the egg whites (Passover cakes take LOTS of whipped egg whites!) enough and so the batter didn’t look right when I folded them in. Since I have made this cake every year since I found this recipe, I could tell what was wrong before I put it in the oven and was able to whip a few extra and fold them in to compensate. It didn’t have quite the flavor intensity it usually does, but this was the lightest and most even looking flourless chocolate cake I’ve ever made.

Y’all have made me hungry! Monday was O’Charley’s with the dotter – we both had the 12 oz Louisiana Sirloin, mine with salad and a baked potato. Tuesday, I plugged my toaster oven back in and baked sirloin with tater tots. Tonight, I though maybe frozen meatballs and penn pasta with Prego (no sugar added) sauce, all microwaved. The pasta comes in a 60 second microwaveable pouch, just like my Unca Ben’s brown rice, so it’ll just take a few minutes. I’m taking out tuna steaks for tomorrow, probably with more tater tots. Sides will mostly include broccoli and carrots.

Me? I like cooking, not eating. I love the ingredients and the chopping and the sounds and the smells. I just have no appetite, so unless I have meals that need to be made in the next three or four days, I don’t plan for food and end up eating whatever I can find when I get dizzy from not eating. The meal service takes care of that.

I took the day off from work today (it’s my birthday), so har on that. I planned on getting more yarning done, and writing done, but oh well. I do plan on working on the play tonight at rehearsal, so there’s that!

So technically it’s Thursday, but I haven’t gone to bed yet, so I’m counting it as Wednesday. I was in a crappy mood when I got off work, but instead of calling the night a wash, a took a break, then got two hours in on my current WIP. It wasn’t amazing work or anything, but I’m pretty proud of myself for actually doing it.

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About the Author

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author of twenty novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, novellas, and short stories, and the editor of three essay anthologies. She lives in a cottage in New Jersey surrounded by deer, bears, foxes, and dachshunds, where she often stares at the ceiling and counts her blessings.